Eat Skull – ‘III’

Eat Skull - 'III'

Score

The best track has lyrics about “watching dead horses decompose”

Portland’s Eat Skull were the scuzziest of the scuzzed-up lo-fi bands on the scene when their debut album ‘Sick To Death’ emerged in 2008. It sounded as though it had been recorded hastily at gunpoint by someone obsessed with turning it up to 11. Feedback, distortion and indecipherable vocal screams saw the group placed in a short-lived sub-genre known as ‘shitgaze’. But where other shitgazers – Psychedelic Horseshit, Times New Viking – had moderate success in the niche, Eat Skull have kept the shit part very much at the heart of what they do. ‘III’ largely eschews fuzz but has plenty of rough edges – the tacky synths and cheap drum loop on ‘How Do I Know When To Say Goodnight’ being the worst offender. Of its 30 minutes, a third come from just two tracks (‘Space Academy’, ‘Catch ’Em Before They Vanish’) while the others are half-baked ideas. When your best track has lyrics about “watching dead horses decompose” it’s indicative of a standard lower than that of a Tesco Value burger.